California Legal Brief

The Rule of The People v. The Superior Court of Riverside County is that a former prosecutor must be disqualified from presiding over a Racial Justice Act evidentiary hearing when they were directly involved in making charging decisions and present at staffing meetings where homicide filing decisions were made during the relevant time period being analyzed for institutional bias, under circumstances where the judge's personal involvement in the decision-making process being scrutinized might cause an objective observer to reasonably doubt the judge's impartiality.

The Rule of Dawadi v. Adhikari is that check memo line annotations do not constitute sufficient written acknowledgment to revive a time-barred debt, under circumstances where the debtor explicitly refused to guarantee the debt, denied borrowing the money, and the annotations merely identify a payee for accounting purposes without constituting an unqualified admission of a subsisting obligation.

The Rule of The Retail Property Trust is that Revenue and Taxation Code section 170(a)(1) requires physical damage to property (whether direct or indirect) to qualify for reassessment relief, under circumstances where a property owner seeks disaster relief based on diminished property value from access restrictions alone without any physical harm to property.

The Rule of In re Sebastian C. is that placement in a family home with supervision and programming provided by a community-based agency can meet the requirements of a less restrictive program, under circumstances where the community-based nonresidential service program provides the programming and services rather than just the family home itself.

The Rule of Nargizyan is that an insurer cannot establish application of a "continuous or repeated seepage or leakage" policy exclusion based solely on the size of a pinhole leak and resulting water damage, without evidence of the actual duration of the leak, under circumstances where the insured discovered and immediately repaired the leak with no evidence of mold or long-term water accumulation.

The Rule of Waterford Property Company v. County of Orange is that a declaratory relief action challenging governmental tax assessments arises from protected activity under the anti-SLAPP statute when the claim relies upon the government entity's public statements, advocacy, petitioning activities, and official communications regarding the tax assessments, under circumstances where the plaintiff frames the dispute as involving broader public policy issues and relies on the government's protected speech to establish both the existence of an actual controversy and the need for declaratory relief.

The Rule of Y.P. v. Wells Fargo & Co. is that a bank may be liable for negligent misrepresentation when its employee represents that a deposited check is valid and cleared without following the bank's own verification procedures, under circumstances where the depositor specifically inquires about the check's validity and legitimacy rather than merely funds availability.

The Rule of Chang v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group is that the "going and coming rule" applies to hybrid workers when they are commuting to their office on scheduled in-office days, even if they sometimes work from home, under circumstances where the employee's home is not a worksite on the day of the accident and the employee is engaged in an ordinary commute to their primary workplace.

The Rule of Gonzalez v. Community Mortuary is that the affirmative defense of impracticability of performance is an equitable defense that must be decided by a judge, not a jury, under circumstances where a party seeks excuse from contract performance due to events making performance impracticable through no fault of their own.

The Rule of People v. Bradley is that the One Strike law permits only a single sentence per count based on qualifying circumstances, and the Habitual Sexual Offender law and One Strike law are alternative sentencing schemes requiring the trial court to choose only one, under circumstances where a defendant is convicted of qualifying sex offenses with multiple proven One Strike circumstances and prior convictions.

The Rule of Chi v. Department of Motor Vehicles is that a DMV hearing officer's combination of investigative and adjudicatory functions does not violate due process when the officer acts as a neutral fact-finder rather than as an advocate for the department, under circumstances where the officer introduces relevant evidence, asks clarifying questions, and rules on objections pursuant to a policy requiring neutrality.

The Rule of Tulare Medical Center Property Owners Association is that CC&Rs adopted by public entities prohibiting abortion clinics are unenforceable as violations of fundamental public policy and Civil Code section 531, under circumstances where a public entity creates land use restrictions that interfere with constitutional reproductive rights without demonstrating a compelling governmental interest.

The Rule of **Santana v. Studebaker Health Care Center** is that ambiguities in multiple arbitration-related documents signed simultaneously do not negate a valid agreement to arbitrate employment disputes where the parties' intent to arbitrate is clear from the overall terms, under circumstances where the documents contain minor conflicts regarding procedural matters like arbitrator selection but consistently reflect mutual agreement to resolve employment-related disputes through binding arbitration.

The Rule of People v. Deen is that a trial court must conduct an objective evaluation of whether a prospective juror's circumstances would prevent or substantially interfere with their ability to act with entire impartiality, even when the juror states they can be fair, under circumstances where a panelist has personal relationships with victims or witnesses, has received detailed case information from prospective witnesses, and expresses concerns about their ability to be impartial.

The Rule of In re Marriage of Jenkins is that a default judgment in a family law case must be set aside when it exceeds the relief requested in the petition and the defaulting party lacked adequate notice of the specific assets to be divided, under circumstances where the petition contained only "TBD" placeholders for property division and the prove-up hearing was conducted based on informal, off-the-record communications without proper notice to the defaulting spouse.

The Rule of People v. Player is that a jury's not-true finding on a personal firearm use enhancement does not preclude a resentencing court from finding the defendant was the actual killer in a Penal Code section 1172.6 proceeding, under circumstances where the jury convicted the defendant of murder despite the not-true weapon enhancement finding.

The Rule of In re Marriage of Charles and Julie Ann Bowman is that trial courts retain discretion to consider Family Code factors including the losing party's ability to pay when determining the amount of attorney's fees under a prevailing party clause in a marital settlement agreement, under circumstances where the MSA contains a general attorney's fees provision without specific limitations on the court's consideration of equitable factors.

The Rule of In re Melson is that the prosecution must correct false testimony from key eyewitnesses regarding what they previously told police during their identification process, even if the false statements appear to result from faulty memory rather than intentional perjury, under circumstances where the prosecutor knew or should have known the testimony was false based on available police interview transcripts and the false testimony could have contributed to the verdict.

The Rule of People v. Newt is that "receiving" a large-capacity magazine under Penal Code section 32310(a) requires evidence beyond mere possession, specifically evidence as to the provenance of the magazine (such as that defendant bought or received it after January 1, 2000, from someone who manufactured, imported, kept for sale, offered for sale, gave, or lent it), under circumstances where the prosecution seeks a felony conviction for "receiving" rather than a misdemeanor conviction for "possessing" under subdivision (c).

The Rule of People v. Nielsen is that a trial court's failure to make express findings under Penal Code section 1170(b)(6) does not require reversal when the record demonstrates the court understood and considered childhood trauma as a mitigating factor and weighed it against aggravating circumstances, under circumstances where the defendant made an initial showing that childhood trauma contributed to drug addiction and criminal conduct, but no party explicitly raised section 1170(b)(6) at sentencing.